Sex for Pleasure, Rights to Participation, and Alternatives to AIDS: Placing Sexual Minorities and/or Dissidents in Development

This paper highlights some of the contradictions in the relationship between rights and participation in the evolution of discourses on sexualities in development in various countries throughout the Third World. It does so by examining the ways in which the participation of sexual minorities and/or dissidents comes to be framed by the development industry, and focuses in particular on the ready placement of sexual minority rights and well-being struggles within an HIV/AIDS framework. It goes on to identify and consider alternative strategies for realising sexuality rights, particularly through the adaptation of rights-based approaches to development (RBA), and including the affirmation of sexual pleasure as a basic human right. The author considers which, if any, of these ?new? development agendas provides the most promising terrain for negotiating the rights and well-being of sexual minorities and/or dissidents, and for their inclusion in processes of decision-making that affect their lives, their families and their communities.